Elan School for troubled teens to close

POLAND  — The Elan School, a private boarding school in Maine for troubled youth where Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel went as a teenager, is shutting its doors because of financial difficulties brought on by declining enrollment.

The school in the central Maine town of Poland opened in 1970 and is now owned by Sharon Terry, the widow of co-founder Joe Ricci, who died in 2001.

The school drew national attention during Skakel’s 2002 murder trial. Skakel, a nephew of Ethel Kennedy, was convicted of killing neighbor Martha Moxley with a golf club in Greenwich, Conn., when he was 15. During the trial, former classmates at Elan testified that Skakel had confessed to them while at the school.

The Sun Journal of Lewiston says the school will close April 1.

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